Tees
Valley Communities Online

Steve
Thompson – TVCO Project Manager
Community Informatics Research &
Applications Unit
University Of Teesside

NOTE:-  If you are connected to the Internet whilst reading this document the hyperlinks will show you examples from the TVCO website

The Tees Valley Communities Online website is  made up of 13 websites contributed to by 7 ex steel making communities in the Tees Valley UK plus their invited guests. The site  is a frameset and each group produces their own content for the “body” page that relates to their community. This is currently happening at different levels with some community groups directly updating and uploading their own content whilst others give their material to myself or the TVCO technician DAvid Auston for uploading. We are running training sessions so that eventually everyone will be able to update their own content. 

Building Community (artistic) Content

From Hope To Reality

The Communities in the TVCO project are areas where the predominant employment was formerly in steel making. Click here to see the map and then click on any of the  community locations to see the “human face of the Internet” as it appears on Teesside. 

The very first place I visited on Teesside resulted in the very first TVCO webpage. The place  was South Bank and here I learned of the towns motto – “From Hope To Reality. This emphasises the communities desire to turn it’s hopes for the future into a reality. 

The pictures are of Community Art Railings on the site of the once proud South Bank football team. The football stadium had been burned down and all that was left was an ugly wall. The wall was removed to make way for the new railings. Designed by a local artist and produced by a local blacksmith, the railings depict the steel heritage of the town. Also there is the Wilf Manion gate representing one of South Banks most famous football playing sons.

Community Newspapers & Poetry

There is often a great deal of  non digital creative activity going on in communities already,  for instance community newspapers. Tees Valley Communities Online are starting to convert these community newspapers into multi-media representations for publication on the Internet like this one from Skinningrove, “The Skinningrove” News. Unlike the paper-based counterpart the online versions of these community newspapers could contain much more, including multi-media material.

One of the commonest areas of community creativity seems to be in poetry; like this one from the Skinningrove Newspaper or this one from another of the Tees Valley Community Online sites from North Ormesby.

Using the Internet we can add suitable images to these poems, which makes them all the more interesting and we can even incorporate audiointo these presentations like this poem ‘The Miner’.

One of the most exciting aspects of this use of the Internet is that it gives the writer the chance for self-publication in a way that was previously unobtainable. No longer must the creator wait for word from the local newspaper or radio station as to whether their work will be accepted. Using their own web sites they can self publish their work and such is the interactivity that they can also get feedback from potential consumers of their creativity.

Community Web Workshops

One of the most important facets of the work at Tees Valley Communities Online is to engage people and this is achieved by running  informal web workshops like this one at North Ormesby with some young trainees from Shape Training.

Using very user friendly-software, given some basic training and some assistance during the course of a day, people are encouraged  to produce whatever they feel represents their own personality or interests.  For instance this page where a youngster has used an image of his young niece and an image of his favourite pop song of the time, or this page about the local football team and another based around a popular computer game.

Whilst this workshop was going on an older group of people were meeting in the room next door and we could hear the music coming through the walls, so we also took some pictures of these musicians for the workshop web page and included the music they were playing at the time. There is a hyperlink on that page for you to hear that music.

Another workshop featured the youngest web masters we had ever worked with and this is the North Ormesby Anti-Crime Club. The Anti-Crime Club works on the policy of involving young people in activities and workshops at a very young age (6-8 years old) to educate towards better citizenship. The children produced pages like this one and this. V is for Victoria, obviously by Victoria.

This page was produced by the children laying their hands on a scanner and then adding images afterwards.

Scanner Art (personality on a PC!)

Shortly after scanning the children’s hands, I co-presented with Brian Cross, of Artimedia in Manchester. I saw some images from his project  of people’s faces on a scanner. This gave us the idea to experiment by way of scanning people’s faces and adding  the contents of their pockets or handbag to create a snapshot of their personality on a PC.  We came up with images like this. The next one of Nesrein, interestingly has her notebook in full view which is in shorthand because Nesrein is a community reporter. The next one features the typical ‘man scan’ of car keys, house keys and coins, where as ‘women scans’ tend to be a good deal more interesting with the contents of their handbags containing things such as passports and empty gin bottles full of mouthwash (honest).   An exception to the rule, Rupert, one of my colleagues,  took 3 whole scans to feature the contents of his pockets! 1– 2 – 3 This series of pages also lead to a demonstration of snanner art too – click here

And here is something else I find interesting, a series of images produced using everyday objects in the scanner and then using by a simple Java Script have one fade into the other and between each cross fade of an image, you get another image that has never really been created except by serendipity.

Garden On The Web

Here is another workshop that took place in Hartlepool, you may ask why we see an image of people walking in the street and an image of washing being taken down this is because the lady in the picture, Sandra, declared that she really didn’t want to be there in the workshop and she felt that she was the token woman in the group. She said that she wasn’t interested in the Internet or web pages. The question was asked what was she interested in, and she declared she was interested in her garden, which she had spent a year renovating from a wasteland to something beautiful. So we decided to go to her garden, which is the picture you see of the whole group walking in the street, we then took pictures of Sandra’s garden and went back to the workshop where she produced her web page. All of a sudden the internet and producing web pages was something entirely different to her and she produced a page lovingly depicting her garden and what it all meant to her,  despite her earlier contention that she would stay only 10 minutes, she stayed for the entire workshop and then she was delighted when she started to get e-mails as a result of her page going on the internet.

Stitch That!

The North Ormesby Cross Stitch group had a very negative view of computers at first. Click here to read how their opinions changed and to see some of their work.

Older People

Some workshops merely consist of setting up a scanner and a computer and having people come along and have objects or images that interest them scanned in like this one with the Better Government for Older People Group where we were entertained by the Netherfield Belles. People brought in images, old photographs like this, or objects like this the Punkt Roller which, the manufactures claim will keep you thin. During the course of the day we recorded a session of Safety Bingo, click on the link to hear what Safety Bingo sounds like.

Community Media – Community Reporters

The next item depicts something I feel is very important: community media at work. Skinningrove is in the far south of the Tees Valley Communities Online project and can be quite difficult to get to. When the community was recently inundated by flooding they were able to present pictures of this to the web site which preceded the pictures that the mainstream media were able to get by several hours. They were also able to get video footage which the established media were also unable to get. During the course of this conference flooding again took place in Skinningrove and our local newspaper used images from this web site to depict this on their web site and were prepared to pay for the use of such photographs. After the flooding inSkinningrove there was tremendous community spirit and they all got together to clear up the mess and help each other. These images were taken by an environmental artist working in Skinningrove, Jean Grant, in a paddle day to have fun and to clean up the beach. Jean’s work in Skinningrove also produced these pictures with some youngsters doodling on a computer in much the same way they may have done previously with crayons and paper

Skinningrove
Do It Yourself

Skinningrove residents have employed artist Jean Grant to enrich the vision of the community by acknowledging our local understanding and skill in order to take a stronger self sustaining control of their environment. Jean says “the problems of Skinningrove are the result of civic and institutional vandalism”  Click here to see how Skinningrove used the flotsam brought into their village the floods of the past 12 months  (five in total.)

Hyperlinks With The Past 

Recently something very interesting and moving happened in the Tees Valley Communities Online project, an ex-patriot sent in a book containing all the names of the workers who served during the First  World War from Smiths Dock on Teesside. Hearing of this Ken Welham came in to have a look at this book and it was an emotional moment when he found his father’s name in the book. On this page you see Ken and some images he loaned us featuring his father. Ken’s father, Walter Welham is the man in the centre of the cricketing photograph, the umpire on the right is Ken’s grandfather. This image represents an interesting snapshot of social history  where large firms would provide social and recreational activities for their workforce. The Cricket Pavilion in the background of this image was provided by the Smiths Dock Company. 

There is a postscript to this story too, another resident of the Tees Valley informed us that all the names from the Roll of Honour Book are on a Plaque situated where Smiths Dock used to stand. Ken Welham was informed of this (something previously unknown to him) and he went with his sister to visit this plaque. Then to his surprise he was given the opportunity to lay a wreath at this monument on Remembrance Sunday.

Multi Media

Finally, something which I think represents the exciting possibilities of multi-media. You will recall at the beginning of this presentation I showed you images of the new work going on at the site of the old South Bank Football Ground under the town motto ‘From Hope to Reality’. Before this project was begun consultations were made with the local community and the various interviews were recorded in a book produced in collaboration with Cleveland Arts. The Tees Valley Communities Online project is endeavouring to trace all those people whose words were depicted in a book in text form and re-create them in the best form for words – audio. This is a representation of what we have achieved so far in a Flash movie.

What Next

TVCO is diversifying into some new areas; click here for some previews (some sites are under construction)

Goodbye

And now finally we leave the last word to a member of the Tees Valley Communities Online.

TVCO
is a project designed
to use Internet technology to link the six communities (Grangetown,
Dormanstown, St.
Hildas, South Bank, North
Ormesby and Owton/Rossmere)
as means to foster community development and economic regeneration. The
project is funded by ERDF Resider (ex Steel) funding and is facilitated by the
Community Informatics Research and Applications Unit at the University Of
Teesside. A seventh resider community, Skinningrove
has just joined the project. The Resider communities have also invited two other
Tees Valley communities to participate – Eston
and Beckfield